APPLICATION OF HOLOGRAPHIC-INTERFEROMETRY FOR EVALUATION OF 3D NAVIER-STOKES CALCULATIONS

Holographic interferometry is a non-intrusive optical measuring techni que which can potentially capture instantaneous information about a co mplete three-dimensional flow field onto a single holographic image. H owever subsequently extracting the flow data so that it can be used to validate CFD results, is for most practical wind tunnel applications not yet possible. An approach applied in this paper, is to compare exp erimental interferograms with equivalent images obtained by postproces sing the CFD solution. We have investigated transonic flow in a wind t unnel environment and computationally reconstructed both 2D image-plan e interferograms and full D-3 holographic interferograms. These compar isons have subsequently helped us to evaluate and improve our D-3 Reyn olds Averaged Navier-Stokes calculations.